Aragonés claims in the United States the "great success" of the dialogue between Catalonia and Spain

BarcelonaPere Aragonès has defended at Yale University in the United States, the process of dialogue and negotiation that ERC and its Government opened with the State. In fact, he described the strategy as a "great success", although he also admitted that it has entailed electoral "costs" for his party. "If you look at it from an electoral point of view, it has had a cost, but if you look at the whole process, what conditions we were in five years ago and what conditions we have now, it has been a great success. I think this depends on the negotiation process," he said in a conference entitled Negotiation in Secessionist Conflicts: Lessons from Catalonia which he gave this morning from Yale, to which he was invited as one of the experts in "conflict de-escalation".

In this sense, Aragonès has valued the fact that the Spanish government has recognised the political conflict in Catalonia and has claimed "achievements" such as pardons, the repeal of the crime of sedition, the amnesty law or also the transfer of Cercanías and the forgiveness of the debt of the Autonomous Liquidity Fund (FLA). However, he has also recognised that the "fundamental" objective continues to be the negotiation of a referendum on the independence of Catalonia, an issue that is not resolved, as is, therefore, the conflict, he said.

"After the sentences of between 9 and 13 years in prison, the Spanish political elite needed our votes to invest Pedro Sánchez as president. And when I began the conversations with him, with the current president of the Spanish government, he told me: «Well, we must find some solution.»And I said to him: «Our proposal is to start the negotiation process. So we will have to establish the framework and the first steps.»", Aragonès said. In 2019, for the investiture of Pedro Sánchez, ERC agreed with the PSOE to open a dialogue table to address the political conflict. A table that met three times and led to pardons and the repeal of the crime of sedition. In February 2020 it was the first time, the first time Five years ago.

Electoral costs

"If you are in a leadership position, if you are the president of your nation, you should not think about the next elections," Aragonès argued, adding that the focus should be on "the next generations" even if this means "a contradiction" in electoral terms. "I assume responsibility for the electoral cost because at a time when polarization is everywhere around the world, talking about agreements, negotiation and dialogue is not very fashionable, but it is important and responsible from a historical perspective," he argued. Esquerra has suffered an electoral slump in the last municipal, general and also regional elections, but since 2019 the cost has also been internal, because The party has lost more than 1,500 members since 2019.

Aragonès has also admitted that the competition between the pro-independence parties, especially with Junts, has been "a limitation when it comes to initiating a dialogue and a negotiation process" with the State. In fact, the tensions in the last coalition government with Junts came, in part, from these differences when it came to dealing with the State. The former president has celebrated that Junts has now entered into the negotiating logic.